


Like a Firework, Brighter in the Dark

by CavannaRose, MelyssaShadows



Series: Noir Stories [2]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: The Animated Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Noir, Back Alley Brawls, Canon-Typical Violence, Fighting, Gen, Racist Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-10-21 20:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20699387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavannaRose/pseuds/CavannaRose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyssaShadows/pseuds/MelyssaShadows
Summary: Jubilation Lee is a second generation Chinese immigrant in the tension-fraught American 1940s. How does she make a place for herself, and her strange, burgeoning abilities?





	1. Chapter 1

Jubilation took another sharp corner, feet nearly skidding out from under her. She was alone and helpless, never a good combination. The humid air was heavy around her, making breathing hard on the best of days. She grabbed at the bricks, scraping a layer of skin off her fingers as she stabilized herself against the wall and paused to listen. Hooting and hollering echoed down the near-empty streets and she used a word that her Mama would have washed her mouth out with soap if she'd heard her use it. Of course, Mama would have to be not dead as well, and since that wasn't the case for her or Baba anymore, she was going to use the words that fit her current mood.

The wannabe tough-guys had been chasing her for three blocks, and if she was honest with herself she was getting winded. The last few months on the street hadn't done much for her already miserable endurance levels. She wasn't a runner, she was a shopper, or at least she had been once upon a time, before the whole damn world went to shit. She could hear the man getting closer. "Come on you little Commie Jap whore, we'll teach you to invade our country."

Jubilation let out an irritated screech. "I'm not Japanese, you fatheaded gorillas! I'm Chinese! Learn the damned difference!" An empty bottle went winging past her face, shattering on the wall beside her. Apparently, they weren't up to listening to reason quite yet. With another muttered curse, she ducked and ran down the street. She could feel her lungs straining to take in enough oxygen, her heart felt like it was about to burst from her chest, and every muscle in her legs was screaming at her. She hadn't eaten today, and she wasn't sure she'd eaten yesterday either. She wasn't going to be able to keep this up.

She turned another corner and skidded to a stop, panic causing her eyes to go wide. Two of the thugs had somehow gotten ahead of her... surrounded! Without giving it much thought, she turned down the alley to her right. A few steps in and the teen knew she had made a mistake. Dead end. No where to go. Still she ran to the end, hoping maybe she could climb up the discarded bins and crates and get over the wall. Another bottle shattered beside her and she cried out, dropping back to the ground. She turned, facing the four men who had been chasing her since they caught her sleeping in a doorway just half an hour ago.

The biggest man, obviously the team leader, grinned at her. His uniform stretched tight across muscles that he was clearly quite proud of. "Got to kill some Krauts when I was deployed, now I get to kill a little geisha back home. Looks like everything's turning up Kelly today, boys." He twisted a length of chain in his hand, and Jubilation shrunk further back into the refuse. She'd been on the run so long that the smell didn't even bother her anymore, though she could tell at least one of the thugs was wrinkling his nose in distaste. "We don't want your kind here, Nip."

Jubilation dashed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, more frightened than she had been in her whole life, even that night that the house had caught fire, burning up her whole life, and her parents, in a hellish inferno. "For the last time you knuckle-dragging ape, I am NOT Japanese. My people don't even like the Japanese. Please... just let me go..." They drew closer, and she stepped back, squeezing her eyes shut and throwing her hands up in front of her face.

Lights flashed in front of her closed lids, and masculine shouts of fear and pain echoed in the suddenly bright alleyway. Her palms tingled, her fingers feeling like they were inches from a scorching fire. Concerned, she cracked her eyes open, taking in the darkened alley, the light overhead extinguished. Two of the thugs, including the leader, were on the ground, scorch marks on the front of their uniforms. The other two fellas were staring wide-eyed at her, as if she had just sprouted another head or something. The one on the far right was helping his leader to his feet. "What in the Sam Hill was that?"

Not certain what they were talking about, Jubilation noted the confusion and took a chance, trying to race past the thugs. The fella on the left swiped out, wrapping meaty arms around her waist and lifting her into the air. "I don't think so, freakshow. You're gonna tell us what you did to the Sarge, and then we're gonna make you wish you were never born." The teen screamed at the top of her lungs, a piercing note that made her captor wince, and twisted around in his arms, kicking at his torso and battering his head with her strangely warm hands.

A lucky shot landed right in his family jewels and he dropped her, doubling over. Hitting the ground feet first, she stumbled backwards, into the supposed Sarge who had regained his feet. His chain-wrapped fist connected with her side, driving the air from her lungs and knocking her hard enough that she slammed against the wall. Struggling to breathe, she desperately dragged herself around so she could see what was coming. The four men were ringed around her, though they looked more cautious than they had the first time they had cornered her.

"Please... just let me go..." Fear made her voice crack, and when Jubilation raised her hands in front of her, as if to slow the thugs, the tips of her fingers glowed in a rainbow of colours. Surprise widened her eyes, while fear filled the eyes of her pursuers. Now she wasn't one to believe in magic or miracles, but she was clever enough to put two and two together. With a muttered prayer, she shoved her hands forward, aiming for the Sergeant. Streaks and balls of colourful light shot from her fingers, exploding against the ringleader with the vibrancy of fireworks. He staggered back, streaks of black on his skin and clothes where the lights hit.

Jubilation let out a whoop as the other fellas turned and fled. Alone. Yes. But maybe not so helpless after all.


	2. Chapter 2

"Everythin' alright, mademoiselle?" The unexpected voice startles her, the slow Cajun drawl giving it a naturally pleasant cadence. "Why don' y'come inside an' have a drink? Dere's coffee if dats yer preference?" She turned to see a tall, thin man, with messy dark hair standing in the back doorway of the nearest building. He was shuffling a deck of playing cards between his hands, radiant shimmers dancing along the lengths of his own fingers. A few cards turned to ash in his hands, and he flicked it off with a dismissive motion. A large man eased through the door beside him and headed off down the alley, the same way that the soldiers had gone. That was curious, but she had to focus on the problem at hand.

"Ye don' gotta worry, chérie, I'm a simple club owner seein' a jeune fille who could use a helpin' hand, dats all." The entire deck turned to dust and he held up his hands, smiling at her. "Seems we got somethin' in common an' dere ain't very many of us. I'm offerin' ye a safe place. I got food an' drink an' ain't no one gonna mess wit' ye here, I can tell ye dat." He motioned with his head for her to follow him, and he stepped back through the doorway heading inside. "De name's Remy LeBeau, by de way. Who would ye be, chérie?"

Unsure how to feel about a strange man appearing, particularly after the last bunch of blokes, she felt her feet moving closer to him almost of their own volition. That thing he had done with his hands... was it the same thing she did, or different? She'd never seen anything like it before, and now here it was a second time in ten minutes. Digging deep for the courage that kept her going despite living on the streets and on her own, she straightened her spine and fell into step beside him, sending a couple surreptitious glances up at the much taller gentleman. In this light, it almost made his eyes look like they were red.

"My name's Huānténg... Jubilation. Jubilation Lee." She shrugged, the familiar embarrassment colouring her cheeks. It was a weird name, but with Mama and Baba gone, she refused to let it go. It was her last tie to her parents after all. The inside of the building revealed that it was some kind of club, all done up like some kind of lounge or saloon. There was even a stage at one end, and she idly wondered what kind of music they played here. She used to love music, though it had been ages since she'd heard any. The world was both louder and quieter when you lived on the street.

He ... Remy... conferred with the bartender for a second and then returned his attention to her, something she was not entirely comfortable with. "Sit, eat, catch yer breath. We can talk after." Settling onto a bar stool, admittedly one or two down from the tall fella, she accepted the plate of food with suspicious eyes, lifting up something that resembled toast, sniffing it, and putting it back down. For all she knew it was drugged, and she'd been saved for some nefarious plan or something. Maybe Mama was right and she'd read too many dime store novels.

"Look Mister LeBeau, not that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do here, but what exactly ARE you trying to do here? I've been around the block enough times to know that nobody does anything out of the goodness of their own heart. I'm nothing to you, just some immigrant kid that had a bad day. I've got no interest in being some geisha-styled upstairs girl or anything like that, and I don't pass time with fellas old enough to know better, so you can forget about anything like that." She paused to take a breath, wiping the sweat off her palms, cursing that they would give away her nervousness.

"I wouldn't have come in, but you did that thing with the cards... and... well... I guess you saw what I did with my hands to those soldiers and I gotta know. What the heck is it? Do you know? Why did it happen? Can I do it again? Can I make it stop?" She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, willing her stupid tongue to stop wagging. She was starting to sound desperate, and scared. The two things you absolutely did not want to sound like when you were trying to make do on your own. She took a deep breath, her dark brown eyes locking onto his strange magenta ones.

"I don't know what's going on, and I hate not knowing. All I want from you is some answers, and then I'll be out of your hair like I was never here. Promise. I'm not the type to keep coming around with my hands out, but this seems bigger than me somehow, and you seem to have some idea of what's happening. I don't buy for a second that 'simple club owner' line. Unless you're some kind of Houdini and the trick with the cards was just simple misdirection, but I don't think it was."

She looked down at her own hands, frowning at the blackened tips of her fingers. She hadn't even felt them burn. Was that going to happen every time, or was it just because she didn't know what she was doing? "I know whatever I did wasn't any smoke and mirrors, but I don't know how or why it happened. I'm nothing special, and this is just... weird." Weird. What an inadequate word for shooting freaking fireworks from her fingertips and knocking over some guy half again her height like it was nothing. It was like something from one of those superhero comics that ran in the Sunday paper. She suppressed a shudder. Jubilation had no intention of being anything worth noticing, she just wanted to slink back into the shadows where it was safe.


	3. Chapter 3

Staying in the shadows was the closest she ever came to living a safe life. Her family had come over to aid with the great railroad works in the 1860s, not that any of that seemed to matter to the thick-headed clods that lived here now. Hell, there had been Lees in the United States since before most of the jerks who harassed them on the street had ever been there. None of that mattered, none of that was enough to make her American. Apparently. All they saw was the tone of her skin and the shape of her eyes. She was so tired of being less than just because her family didn't start in some fancy European country. Weren't they supposed to have left those standards behind when they seceded? 

Despite the prejudice, Mama and Baba had done well for themselves. With the completion of the railroads, Ah Yeh had opened a small apothecary, catering mostly to the other Chinese immigrants within the small shanty towns they had built up for themselves. Baba had learned from his father, and won the heart of Mama, even though she had been courted by many young men from the town. Mama used to smile when she told the tale, brushing Jubilation's hair back from her forehead with work-roughened hands. She wouldn't have any of them except Baba, because he had been so sweet and awkward. Never a big or athletic man, he had earned her favour through his soft-spoken voice and earnest desire to hear what she had to say when she spoke. "That's the secret, my treasured Jubilation. Do not look for the strongest or bravest, nor the richest or most handsome."

"But Baba is the most handsome man in the world!"

"Of course he is, my Jubilation. That is not what won my heart though. Pretty faces can mask hard hearts. You must look for a man that will listen to you speak. That is a sign that they will value you. Do not look to just be a wife, but to be a partner. To be part of a pair that works together. I am proud that my hands are now rough and red with work, because I did that work beside your Baba." She hadn't understood then, and she wasn't sure she understood now. If a man trotted out offering her money and security, she didn't see that taking it would be half that bad of an idea.

None of that really mattered now. Mama and Baba were gone. At the beginning of this sick and twisted war people had ravaged their small section of the city, torching buildings and raiding shops indiscriminately. They didn't care that most of the occupants considered themselves American. That they had lived in the US for generations at this point. All they saw was that they looked one way, and the families in Chinatown looked more like the enemies that had caused them so fright. Big men with loud voices had broken into their home, and Baba had tried to stop them. Age had not made him more athletic than he had been as a young man, and the angry mob had ... Mama had hurried Jubilation towards the door, knocking furniture between them and the crowd, but she had been caught. 

Jubilation and Mama had been taken to a detention centre, filled with people of all types. Japanese. Chinese. Vietnamese. The people in charge had made no differentiation between any of them, despite the fact that they were from dozens of countries. The conditions had been... horrific. The propaganda machine marched forward, decrying the terrible conditions in the Nazi concentration camps, but within the borders of the US their own citizens were being treated almost as poorly. Mama got sick soon after they came to the camp. Coughing in the damp and cold, so hard that it shook her thin shoulders. Eventually she was coughing blood. Then she stopped coughing. Then she stopped breathing.

That was when Jubilation ran away. It took her a few weeks to put it all together. To horde and hide supplies. To watch the guards. Learn their shifts. Find a weakness in the fences. Make her plan. The first night she tried to make her escape she almost got caught, and ended up returning to the dormitory. It freaked her out, made her more cautious. She waited another week before she made a second attempt at the escape. Finding herself over the wall and on her way, on foot, into the dismal countryside, had been a surprise.

It had taken the better part of six months to get across the country. She lived in barn lofts and abandoned root cellars. Slept in train stations and kept herself as far out of the line of sight as possible. Finding her way to anything resembling a city where she could scavenge and steal had been difficult, and terrifying. Finally, though, she settled on one city. The biggest problem was the soldiers. Home on leave they were primed for aggression and sexually frustrated. Jubilation was small, but definitely feminine, and she looked like an enemy. To a lot of the soldier boys out there, those two facts added up and spelled victim.

Well Jubilation Lee wasn't a victim. She had seen what that did to a body, the toll it took on the soul. She would never be the one with hollow eyes and tired shoulders. It was bad enough what she had already been through. All the pain. All the loss. She felt how it made her harder, colder inside. She felt drawn tight, like there wasn't enough skin to stretch over her fractured feelings, so instead she buried them. Shoving them down deep inside where they festered and stewed. How could she explain any of that to another person without sounding like she was handing out a sob story? Jubilation didn't want anyone looking at her with pity, but she could handle if they stopped looking at her like she was about to be the next body on the morning news.


End file.
